“Luke-Acts as a Mediating Document to Promote Greater Unity between Romans, Jews and Gentiles in the Mid-to Late First-Century Roman Church”

Given the intensity of the modern-day controversies that have occurred between Evangelicals and Pentecostals over issues related to pneumatology, it is easy to understand why someone would have a hard time believing that the author of Luke-Acts1 originally included much of his pneumatological material in part as a means to hopefully solving one of the major controversies of his time. Yet, as will be shown shortly, when one takes both the context and experience of Acts seriously this is the exact conclusion at which one naturally arrives. Conflict played such a huge role in the narrative of Luke- Acts that modern scholars have recognized that it is impossible to come to an accurate understanding of the purpose of Luke-Acts apart from a thorough discussion of the nature of the conflict that existed at the time of Luke's writing. This is so much the case that one's interpretation of Luke's second volume in particular hinges in large part upon how one defines the conflict as well as Luke's intended role in trying to "solve" it. The careful reader of Luke-Acts will almost immediately be hammered with the question of Luke's intended audience. Was he writing to Gentiles only, or was he addressing a mixed audience comprised of both Gentiles and Jews? Are Luke's seemingly negative remarks toward "the Jews" limited to those who openly reject Jesus and therefore actively persecute Christians, or is Luke's seemingly scathing critique broader to all Jews generally?2 A proper understanding of Luke-Acts cannot be arrived at without first, understanding Luke's intended audience and what he hoped they would learn from his writing.